


Illumination

by thedevilchicken



Category: Hannibal (TV), True Detective
Genre: Crossover, Drawing, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 05:36:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17719094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Rust wasn't lying about that month in France.





	Illumination

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/gifts).



> Based around this conversation: 
> 
> _Jennifer: You’ve been to Paris?_   
>  _Rust: For a month._   
>  _Jennifer: What’d you do in Paris?_   
>  _Rust: Mainly just got drunk in front of Notre Dame._

Rust doesn't always tell the truth. 

If people - which means Marty, he guesses - were feeling kinda generous, they might say that's down to his work: all that undercover bullshit does things to your head, they'd say, and that's true at part of the way. But Rust doesn't lie because of that. 

If people - which means Marty, he guesses, along with half of everyone he's ever met in life - weren't feeling generous, they might say it's because he's an asshole. Most times, he wouldn't disagree. Still, realism or pessimism or whatever whoever wants to call it might not make him popular, but it still doesn't make him a liar. 

Rust doesn't always tell the truth. Sometimes it's his name and his whole identity that's bullshit and sometimes it's just the name of his fifth grade English teacher. Sometimes it's just easier that way and sometimes it's just what comes out of his mouth when he opens it, like a reflexive response to stimulus, like it's just part of the way he's wired. 

Sometimes, he lies. But Paris wasn't a lie. 

He was a hell of a lot younger then, fresh-faced and full up with the kind of thorny questions you can never get an answer to, at least not all the way. He thinks sometimes philosophy comes close to the parameters of religion 'cause it's full of _I believe_ , so maybe that was how he wound up drinking like a fucking fish there on the Île de la Cité. 

He watched gangs of camera-toting tourists come and go, snap-happy like they could capture God on film. He listened to the bells ring out for Sunday services as he sat there on the worn pavés, hunched over a bottle of no-name liquor like a disenfranchised Quasimodo. He felt that way: _part-made_ , like some essential part of his had gotten missed out along the way. The epiphanies he wanted didn't come.

One Sunday he passed out during mass, not unexpectedly, except when his eyes opened up he wasn't where he'd been before. He maybe expected whatever the French called a drunk tank, but that wasn't it. The room was old but neat and light and airy, and the guy at the foot of the comfortable bed wasn't dressed like any gendarme he'd ever seen.

"Where am I?" Rust asked. He frowned. "Où..."

"I found you passed out in front of the cathedral," the man replied. His English was accented but not with French. "Two tourists were attempting to rob you. I thought you might prefer to wake with your watch and wallet rather than without."

Rust scrunched his face up, part grimace and part rueful smile. "Thanks," he said. He ruffled his hair, awkward, like he wasn't sure if he'd wanted help or been inviting destitution. When he met it, the guy's cool, assessing gaze said he understood that totally, but what he said instead was, "Apologies, I haven't introduced myself," and he held out one hand toward him. "Hannibal Lecter." 

Rust swung his legs out of the bed. He shook the hand he'd been offered. "Rustin Cohle," he replied, 'cause for all he knew Lecter had rifled through his wallet before he'd woken up. "But it's Rust. Just Rust." 

Lecter's grip was firm and his hand warm, neat and clean except two fingers slightly stained with ink. He looked young, early twenties, younger than Rust, but held himself like an older man or maybe that was just his way. Rust kept hold of his hand just a fraction too long, like maybe a test except he wasn't sure what he was testing. Lecter didn't flinch at all; he just squeezed with his thumb and then pulled back with a pleasant smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Rust was pretty sure he was more unsettled then than Lecter was. 

"Excuse me," Lecter said. "I'm cooking in the other room. I wouldn't want it to burn." He turned for the door, but he glanced back when he got there. "You're welcome to stay," he said. "I've made enough for two." 

Rust stayed. He ate, down to the last drop he mopped off of his plate with a chunk of bread. He thanked him for his hospitality then left again and he had no clue where he was but even with his shitty French he found his way back to his own rented room. He fell asleep considering Hannibal Lecter. 

The next day, he saw him on the square outside the cathedral where he was sitting at a café table, working his way through his third bottle of cheap red wine. Rust raised a hand like a kind of _hail, well met_ and Lecter came over. They drank a glass together. Lecter asked him to dinner, and Rust said yes. 

While Lecter cooked, Rust explored. The place he lived wasn't big so he found the drawings almost right away; they were all over the desk under the window in the dying sun, precise and all minutely detailed - famous buildings, streets, shady parks, all interspersed with meticulous anatomy. In a sketchbook, underneath a sheaf of neatly printed maps of human arteries, was a pencil sketch of Notre-Dame. On the next page, there Rust was, bottle in hand and semi-conscious. On the next, there he was sleeping in Hannibal Lecter's bed. 

"I didn't see you that day," he said, as he set the sketchbook down on the kitchen dining table. 

Lecter raised his brows. "You were very drunk," he replied, while he served up unfamiliar food he'd cooked onto plates he'd got waiting on the table. 

Rust sat down. "Did you bring me here to draw me?" he asked. 

Lecter glanced at him just for a second, over the top of the steaming pan. "No," he replied. He set the pan down in the sink and then took his seat. "But it seemed a shame to let the moment go to waste." 

"So you're an artist?"

"I study medicine. I'm paid for the anatomical drawings." 

"And the rest?"

"A hobby." 

Rust let it drop. He ate his food, and he thanked him, and he left. But that night, in bed all he could think of was a pencil in Hannibal Lecter's hand, sketching the lines of his face. 

The next day, they met again there outside Notre-Dame. Lecter invited him home for dinner, and Rust wasn't sure he wanted to say no. 

"So, you'll be a doctor?" he asked, as he cut up his chicken.

"I expect so, yes," Lecter replied. 

"Do you do life drawings?"

"Cadavers, usually. I have access to a mortuary."

"So you don't draw a lot of living people. Not like you drew me."

"Not very often, no."

Rust glanced at him, over their plates. "Do you want to?" he asked. 

Lecter rested his wrists at the edge of the table, his cutlery still in his hands. He looked at Rust, steadily, with a spark of intrigue.

"Are you asking if I'd like to draw you?"

Rust shrugged. "Sure, why not," he said. "I'll model and you can pay me off in dinners."

"Then yes," Lecter said, with a hint of a smile. " _Why not_."

The first time, all he drew was Rust's hands; he asked him to roll up his sleeves as they sat there at the kitchen table, so he did, and Lecter drew his hands down to the smallest details. When he was done, he cooked. 

The second time, he had Rust take off his boots and socks and he drew his feet up to the ankle bones where they faded into disembodied nothing on the page. And when he was done, he cooked again. 

The third time, Rust took off his shirt and Lecter drew his back. Lecter took Rust's wrists in both his hands and guided them up over his head, then folded them together there against the crown to stretch out the muscles for the sketch. Rust shivered at his fingers on his skin and Lecter didn't say a word. And then, after, Rust put on his shirt and Lecter cooked. 

The fourth time, he drew Rust's torso, form his Adam's apple to the buckle of his belt. His arms faded at the shoulders, at the extent of perfect collarbones, like a chunk of ruined Greek sculpture. And then, just like always, Lecter cooked for both of them.

The fifth time, Rust stripped naked, and Lecter drew his hips and thighs and sex. He watched Lecter's eyes on him, watched the pencil move across the page, and he felt himself blush just like some kind of high school virgin though he'd long since ceased to be. Afterwards, he dressed and breathed back some composure, while Lecter cooked. 

The sixth time, Lecter posed him naked on a chair, thighs spread out wide. The seventh, he posed him on his knees with hands behind his head, and drew his back. The eighth, he said he wanted him erect. Rust complied; he stroked himself till he was hard, and Lecter caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he sketched the length of Rust's erection onto paper. 

The ninth time, Rust stretched out on his back and didn't stop till he'd come all over his own belly. And the tenth, Lecter set aside his sketchbook before he was even halfway done. He sucked Rust's cock then he bent him down over the dresser and they fucked like that, trying to ignore the mirror they were standing there in front of. And after, Lecter cooked. They ate together, then Rust left. 

He was there for a month, watching the sketchbook fill with drawings while he drank himself toward a premature oblivion. Lecter didn't try to slow that, doctor though he intended to be; Lecter just watched him, day by day, cooked for him and drew him and fucked him or was fucked by him. He was an attentive lover, but Rust never fooled himself into thinking they were friends. 

Then, in the end, his time was up and he was due back in Texas. They said goodbye. Rust genuinely thought that was the end but sometime past eight weeks ago, some shitty PI work he took on just to pay the bills took him up to Baltimore. He recognized a face. 

Rust doesn't always tell the truth. Sometimes he can barely tell where the lies end and the truth begins, but Paris was the truth: he spent a month getting drunk outside Notre-Dame. There's just more to the story than he's ever told before. 

He doesn't always tell the truth, but he knows who he is. Maybe he's not a good man, sure, but he knows the world needs bad men in it. 

Hannibal Lecter never drew his face. He drew him in a variety of neatly sectioned parts and it's taken more than twenty years for him to find out why, but now so much makes sense.

The world needs bad men, but he's not sure it needs the Chesapeake Ripper. 

Rust doesn't always tell the truth, but he knows it when he sees it.


End file.
